Horseman, Pass By by Larry McMurtry

Author:Larry McMurtry [McMurtry, Larry]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781451606577
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Published: 2010-06-01T07:00:00+00:00

2.

They weren’t at the tank, but I stood on the dam and watched them coming out of the brush to the north, trailing to the lots for their morning feed. The fish were making dawn breathrings on the gray sheet of the water. When the horses got close enough I shook the oat bucket at them, and they filed over to me one by one. Each one stretched his neck and took a mouthful, afraid of being caught. When Stranger came up I set the bucket on the ground and let him nose it; while his head was down I slipped the reins around his neck. I bridled him, and poured the rest of the oats in little piles for the other horses. A covey of bobwhites whistled behind the dam; I waited a minute and saw them trail down to water. I hung the empty oat bucket on a snag.

Stranger let me slip on his bare back, and we trotted off toward our big valley pasture. When I got through the gate, the dewy grass stretched away in front of me, almost six miles to another fence. The dawn breeze stirred in my face: the sky to the east was brightening. Idiot Ridge was a mile away, breaking the levelness of the plain. I touched Stranger into a steady lope, so we could get there and wait for the sun. Dozens of feeding jack rabbits broke before us, but as we went past they zigzagged off to the side and stopped, their long ears folded against their heads. A big, brown-winged prairie hawk sat on the limb of a dead mesquite, watching for quail. Once Stranger jumped a small mesquite bush when I wasn’t looking, and I almost slid off his slick back. When we got to the ridge I slowed him down, and he picked his way through the loose gray rocks to the top.

On the north edge of Idiot Ridge I stopped and slid off. Headquarters lay to the northeast, where the sun was about to come up. The whole long line of sky behind the house and barn was orange and red; the wind was driving the layer of summer clouds out of sight to the northwest. I could see the horses we had left at the tank, filing up to the lots for their regular feed. In a few minutes Jesse would tend to them. Farther down the ridge two hawks were gliding low over the rocky hillside, dipping and swooping, then almost steady in the air. Stranger whinnied, then bent his neck and began to graze. The sky was a country of changing colors, like the land: red in the east, still deep night blue in the west. The moon was fading out of sight. Across the thread of highway, in a neighbor’s pasture, an old bull bellowed, the hoarse sound barely reaching me. I could see a few of Granddad’s cows on the flats to the south. Suddenly Stranger raised his head and snorted.

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